PixlBit

Hmm... this is apparently only the 15th blog I've written since I came here to PixlBit. I don't know what it is, but something about writing here is different from when I was over at 1UP. I don't mean that as a slight against the community or the people who run this site, but... well, I suppose real life has been getting in the way. That, and games on systems other than the NES...

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted... time flies, I suppose.

Well, I've been putting it off for awhile, but I've finally almost finished Final Fantasy V. The operative word, however, is "almost"...

I just realized that Air Fortress was actually NES #155. NES #154 was Super Glove Ball. The less said about that game right now, the better (although I would play a sequel if Microsoft made one with Kinect 2.0... they still own Rare, you know).

Since the original purpose of this blog was to write about my quest to beat every US-released NES game, I figured it might actually be good to write about that for once! On the review front, the big hold involves my need to go back and replay Castlevania III again; I made it through once and got the Sypha ending, but I don't remember enough about the specifics to intelligently comment on the gameplay. I should've written down more at the time, I suppose... although that won't be an issue for certain reviews down the line (Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off-Road, for example, is practically ready to post once I get to it on the list).

I decided to go ahead and put Ni no Kuni on hold for awhile. I'll probably come back to it, but the lack of the all-out defense command was getting on my nerves. Also, I might need to reconsider my current familiar setup, or just go ahead and evolve the blasted things already - I don't need my stats fully maxed to make the most use of them.

You know, I was thinking about doing a full review of this game at some point, but given that it takes me forever to get NES reviews up, I'll keep this on the brief side. This blog assumes, by the way, that you know what Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is and have either played it or read a few of the reviews going around.

I don't want to spend my time echoing everyone else's sentiments about E3 (although I am glad the PS4 allows used games in a "normal fashion"), so I'll just say this one thing:

At long last, summer session has finally come to an end at the university where I teach, and pretty soon I'll have more time to devote to my most beloved of hobbies... and, of course, to write music and do other productive things. Yes.

(Note that the following blog will probably be a bit more rambly/ranty and less well thought-out than my NES reviews tend to be, so bear with me as I vomit my immediate thoughts onto the internet with limited editing. Also, I might be wrong on some of the facts I'm citing, so feel free to (constructively) point out any outright misinformation contained herein.)

I've been reading a bit about XBox One's unveiling, and I've come to a conclusion: I still don't give a crap. The mandatory install situation seems like a bad idea for the used game market (and therefore collectors like myself), and it's not like hard drive capacities are infinite, especially when dealing with large games. There's this move in technology towards cloud-based everything, and I don't exactly like the idea of needing to be always connected to play single-player games. Granted, what I've read doesn't indicate this is going to be the case across the board, but if a developer decides to have some server somewhere shoulder some of the processing burden, what does that mean for the handful of